caricature

Well, it is that time of year again. Every year, my brother, who owns a restaurant on the north side of Chicago, hosts a ‘Oscar Viewing Party’ (and before he owned the restaurant, it was held for many years in his home). Starting in 2004, I began doing an annual ‘Oscar Nominations Caricature Poster’ as a gift to him, and have kept up with it now every year for the past 12 years. I was seriously doubting whether I was going to have time to finish one this year, due to deadline crunches, but I was just too geeked about the concept, and somehow managed to create time to work on it after hours. Anyhow, here it is: #12 and ‘double sized’ from the format of years past, and includes every Actor, Actress and Supporting nominations and represents in one way or another each of the Best Picture nominees and a tiny nod to each Best Animated Feature film. (Click on the image above to see a larger detailed version)

Above was an illustration for Barrons this week for an upcoming article on ‘fixing the budget’. Also, this week, I finished up a series of caricature illustrations for Dover for an upcoming book (I did a similar series of illos on baseball themes last year this time).

Above is a quick turnaround illustration for the Chronicle that I did on Monday. Otherwise, the workload continues to be rather heavy on the prelim sketch phase. Below are a sampling of sketches for further upcoming projects, and I’ll see you later in the week when I start finishing some of these up.
Going to be a busy music weekend coming up, I’ll be taking the day off on Friday to drive down to Chicago to hear my son blow his sax at his college’s ‘Combo Fest’, and then driving back home to prepare for the Jukejoint Handmedowns first appearance at ‘Nick Fink’s’ (this is a cool old bar on the other side of the river from us in Comstock Park, been around since 1888 with some great black vinyl booths and velvet wallpaper), and then our adult string orchestra will be having its christmas concert on Sunday afternoon (I play cello in this group, and the wife plays viola).

Hard to believe it was ten years ago already. I’ve noticed a lot of other illustrators have been doing a fair share of “that certain date” Anniversary illustration assignments, and I was beginning to think it was going to pass me by. But I got a call from Newsday this morning with a quick turnaround assignment. Thankfully not another image of airplanes and exploding buildings, but something with a little more of a hopeful (yet vigilant) feel to it. This one will run with an editorial in the Sunday paper.

Day Eighty

Got an email assignment last week regarding a tee shirt design of a bear smoking a tree shaped cigar and wearing a ranger hat. This project needs to be ‘color separated’, which is something I have very little experience with, so I may be turning over part of the ‘print prep’ work over to my wife. Below is the color version (with the ‘less than seven colors’ specified).

Day Eighty One

The children’s ‘joke book’ project continues, with a few more revised sketches. From the way things are looking, I’ll probably be posting a lot of rough sketches this week.

Day Eighty Two

Today’s sketch is a quick caricature of Mitt Romney for a possible upcoming project. (Addendum: The project got the go ahead in October, but I won’t be able to post any examples until it is published sometime in 2012, but I spent most of October and November working on it)